Xiao Lu

Xiao Lu (Chinese: 肖鲁, born 1962) is a Chinese artist who works with installation art and video art. She became famous in 1989, when she participated in the 1989 China/Avant-Garde Exhibition with her work, Dialogue. Just two hours after the exhibition opened, she suddenly shot her own work with a gun, causing an immediate shutdown of the exhibition. When the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred four months later, her actions were heavily politicized, referred to as “the first gunshots of Tiananmen”.

Dialogue (1989)

Xiao Lu's infamous work at the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition, Dialogue (1989), shows a man and a woman talking to each other in phone booths; between them is a red phone with its receiver dangling off the hook. Dialogue (1989) could be called China's first major feminist contemporary work of art.

According to Gao Minglu, the principal curator, no one on the exhibition committee knew about the gunshots beforehand.

There has been great discussion and confusion about Xiao Lu's actual intentions with the gunshots after their occurrence. As Xiao Lu and her partner Tang Song were both detained immediately afterward, there was no way to know their true intentions. The only indication was a document signed by Xiao Lu and her then-partner Tang Song, given to Gao Minglu after the shooting and preserved by her. It reads:

“As parties to the shooting incident on the day of the opening of the China Avant-garde Exhibition, we consider it a purely artistic incident. We consider that in art, there may be artists with different understandings of society, but as artists we are not interested in politics. We are interested in the values of art as such, and in its social value, and in using the right form with which to create, in order to carry out the process of deepening that understanding.

It remained unclear, however, why the shooting happened, if Tang Song also participated or planned it, and if it was intended to be a part of the artwork or not. Most people regarded the shooting as a performance piece created by Xiao Lu and Tang Song.

In an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2014, Xiao Lu clarified that her reasons for the gunshots were not political, but also embraced the political interpretations of them, stating, “I created the work out of personal feelings, but this work became interpreted with political meanings…I don't reject this. I've come to understand that with this work, making it for myself is one thing, but how it is interpreted is also a big part of it.”

Xiao Lu ( born 1962 in Hangzhou, China) . In 1984 she graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts High School, Beijing. In 1988 she graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts) in Hangzhou, China. From 1989 to 1997, Xiao Lu lived in Sydney, Australia,  became Australian citizen in 1997, and returned to China in 1997. From 1997 to 2020, she lives and works in Beijing and Hangzhou, China. From 2021 to now, Xiao Lu lives and works in Sydney, Australia.

Xiao Lu works with performance, installation and other art forms, but she is most known for her performance. Recent exhibitions and some major past exhibitions:  "China – The Past is Present" National Gallery of VIC, Australia (2022); "Sensitive Content" Unit London, UK (2022); "Empowerment" Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2022); "20th-Century Galleries Collection 1960s-2000" Art Gallery of NSW, Australia (2022); "Bald Girls- Chain Reaction" KUH Art Space, Dusseldorf, Germany (2022); "Stepping Out! Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art" Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway (2022); "The Realm of Existence: An exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art" Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, China (2021); “Democracies” TATE Liverpool, UK (2020); Solo show "Skew" 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Solo show "Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue” 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia (2019); “1970s - Present” MoMA, New York, USA (2019); “Collection Displays: Performer and Participant” TATE Modern, London, UK (2018); “Her Kind” Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing, China (2018); “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World” Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2017); “Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art" Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); "Bald Girls" Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2012); "Image History Existence" National Art Museum, Beijing, China (2011); “New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art” UCCA, Beijing, China (2007); “China/Avant-Garde” National Art Museum, Beijing, China (1989)

Selected collections: Taiking Life, Beijing, China; Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, China; MoMA, NY, USA; TATE Modern, London, UK; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia; National Gallery of VIC, Australia; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia.

Publication: The novel "Dialogue" (Edition in Chinese and English), and translated from Chinese by Archibald McKenzie. Hong Kong University Press 2010.